We take a brief look at the classic American car brand Pontiac. Where did it begin and why do we love them in the UK…
Pontiac was born in 1907 originally as the Oakland Motor Company in Pontiac, Michigan in the USA and debuted with the Oakland Four in 1909. The first Pontiac branded car the Series 6-27 arrived in 1927. By 1933 Pontiac was producing the lowest cost 8 cylinder engine on the US market. Pitched amongst the General Motors brands as a notch in affordability above Chevrolet but not as premium as other GM brands. In the late 1950’s the brand was reworked under engineer John Delorean as a performance brand which paved the way in to the 60’s Muscle Car scene in 1962 with the Pontiac Grand Prix and 1964 with the GTO. Later on the Firebird was born in answer to the Ford Mustang and Chevrolet Camaro. the flagship Pontiac Trans AM model was offered as the high end performance model made particularly famous by the Burt Reynolds classic Smokey and the Bandit. Into the 1980’s the Firebird became an iconic car as a redesigned coupe. The 80’s saw successes with the Fiero and the Quad4 engine by 2009 however GM was considered dropping various brands including the Pontiac brand and in 2010 the last production car role off the line.
We never had the Pontiac brand in the UK. Despite issues around the name of the Indian cheif who fought the British, the brand was never deemed viable for the UK or Europe. Certainly on the UK classic car scene Pontiac has it’s place with cars like the GTO, Grand Prix, Firebird in particular the Trans AM being incredibly popular. GTO is very much a premium high value Muscle Car. The Firebird is iconic through two generations be it Bandit Car or KITT car. The Fiero is also popular choice but for different reasons these are used for making fake Lamborghini and Ferrari replicas. So how many of these classic American car imports are on the road in the UK? Accordingly to howmanyleft.co.uk there are around 2600 registered in the Uk either licensed or SORN. Pontiac car import has dropped over the decades. In the early 2000’s DVLA was registering an average of around 130 a year which pre-COVID had dropped to around 50 cars. This is isn’t due to desirability waning, it is most probably a combination of affordability and rarity.
